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Coalition of Corruption
The Coalition of Corruption is an international crime syndicate, widely regarded as the largest SuperHuman-exclusive organization in the world. Comprised of a vast network of loosely affiliated SuperVillains from all walks of life, the Coalition is dedicated to establishing a new world order built upon the tenet that SuperHumans belong to a higher caste than their powerless brethren. Coalition members are united in the belief that nothing short of the total eradication of government by consensus will be enough to lay the groundwork for their new SuperHuman regime, and have spent close to half a century enacting some of the most dastardly plans imaginable in an attempt to shift the balance of power in their favor. History The origins of the Coalition date back to the early 1960s, when Doctor Danger first formulated his thesis on SuperHuman superiority. His studies into SuperHuman sociology led him the conclusion that society as a whole was stifling the tremendous potential that SuperHumans could have on humanity's future. Believing that it was the birthright of all SuperHumans to live in a world without fear of being persecuted for their gifts, Danger began compiling a database of potential recruits to help him turn his dream into reality. 'To Rule the World!' The process of seeking out Europe's SuperHumans was a tedious business, and in 1970 Danger turned to the American SuperHuman Authority and their extensive SuperHuman records to expedite his work. His initial attempts to break into ASA headquarters and steal the files were unsuccessful; he quickly found himself the target of Myster E, a SuperHuman black ops agent working for the ASA. Impressed by Myster E's combat prowess, Danger capitalized on preexisting tensions between Myster E and his superiors to turn Myster E against the ASA. With Myster E at his side, Danger was able to both infiltrate the ASA and escape unscathed with their records on dangerous SuperVillains. The two fled the country shortly thereafter, traveling to Paris in search of their next recruit, Renaissance. After securing the allegiance of Renaissance, the SuperVillains traveled to Switzerland to break Gravedigger from Gefängnacht. Continuing along the Alps, they unwittingly stumbled across the Italian SuperVillain Grand Cross, who killed Gravedigger and assumed his place in the quartet. After an initial run in with the American SuperHero Mentor, who had been tasked by the now-defunct ASA to track down Myster E (who had changed his alias to Mr. Mystery after defecting), the four founders devised a bold scheme to eliminate any future interference in their plans. They set to work recruiting lesser Villains to their cause for several months before they were able to enact their plan, sending an army of robots into New York City. A team of SuperHeroes led by Mentor tracked the Villains to their volcanic lair, where the four revealed themselves to be the leaders of the newly created Coalition of Corruption. After a short battle, Doctor Danger also revealed that he had intended for the Heroes to discover the Coalition's lair; the ambient Omega Radiation given off by their powers was being collected as fuel for an enormous machine the Coalition had created. The device would trigger seismic activity that would activate other machines placed around the world, causing volcanoes to form over the six cities that possessed the world's greatest concentration of SuperHeroes, thus eliminating any feasible opposition to the Coalition's takeover. The Heroes managed to prevail by continuing to fight the four Villains, overloading the machine with excessive amounts of Omega Radiation and causing it explode violently. The Coalition's island headquarters was leveled in the blast, and the founders were believed to have perished as well. But unbeknownst to the Heroes, they had escaped the blast unscathed, and vowed that the world had not seen the last of the Coalition of Corruption... ---- In the coming decades the Coalition rose to prominence as the world's largest SuperHuman crime syndicate, disbanding or absorbing their rival organizations until the Coalition became the sole face of SuperHuman organized crime. With fewer and fewer SuperVillain threats to thwart, the world's Heroes began to band together in order to defeat the Coalition, eventually forming the League of Salvation in 1993. The Coalition also became the primary target of the Children of Equality, who militarized their ranks in order to stand a better chance against the Villains. The two opposing forces clashed for decades until the Coalition became determined to put an end to the Children's nuisance. Agents of the Coalition met with operatives of the US government in 1995, and began a joint venture to eradicate the extremists. Their combined forces conducted a series of brutal raids on known Children safe houses, while Coalition members hunted down and slaughtered anyone suspected of involvement with the Children. While effective in all but disbanding the Children, the massacre also succeeded in bringing down the full might of the League on the Coalition. Over the next decade, the League struck blow after blow against the Coalition until the crime syndicate began to show signs of weakening. Many of the Coalition's most veteran members started to retire, and both the Coalition and the League began scouring the world for new recruits. 'To Save the World!' After Doctor Danger escaped from Confinement, word soon spread that he was marshaling the Coalition for another dastardly scheme. The League mobilized in an attempt to counteract them, and the two organizations battled repeatedly across several continents. Meanwhile, Danger used the distraction to allow other Coalition members to secretly bring him parts for his latest creation, a nostalgic throwback to the Coalition's first bid for power. Once the device was complete, all he needed was a substantial amount of Omega Radiation to complete his plan. After locking some of the more prominent Coalition members in a room with robots programmed to kill them, Doctor Danger lured a group of League Heroes into the Coalition's Alpine headquarters. He revealed to the Heroes that after being driven to near insanity by his plans being consistently foiled, he determined that if he couldn't rule the world, no one could. To that end, he had abandoned world domination in an attempt at grandiose suicide - the enormous device he had built in the heart of the base would funnel Omega Radiation into the planet's core, causing the earth to explode violently. Naturally, neither the League nor the Coalition took kindly to this plan, teaming up to fight against Doctor Danger and those deranged enough to side with him. The interference of the extradimensional being Cavalier brought an end to the fight, however, forcing the combatants to evacuate while Danger's machine backfired, destroying only the mountain that had housed it and not the planet's core. In the aftermath, it seemed as if Doctor Danger had been granted his final wish - the man who had led the Coalition for nearly forty years never emerged from the wreckage. ''Reformation'' Without Doctor Danger to lead them, the Coalition began to fall apart. Members began to band together into splinter factions, all considering themselves to be the only ones truly carrying on the syndicate's nefarious work. Grand Cross retreated from the public eye, taking G-Force with him. Ruk van Duff offered asylum to any Coalition members willing to work for him. The cyborg Manchine even began his own sect called The New Coalition, a small band of Coalition sympathizers whose goal was to resurrect Doctor Danger so that he could once again lead a united Coalition. Amidst the chaos, the psychic Midnight led several coordinated attacks against the League, inadvertently becoming a beacon of strength that other members of the Coalition rallied to. With the backing of Coalition founder Mr. Mystery, Midnight funded the construction of a new headquarters in Siberia, establishing himself as the Coalition's new leader. Incensed that an amateur would dare attempt to place himself at the head of the Coalition, Renaissance activated an old Coalition supersoldier experiment named Knucklebones, and ordered him to assassinate Midnight. Both Renaissance and Knucklebones eventually gave up this pursuit when the League became involved, instead joining Manchine's New Coalition. Convinced that the Coalition had regained its full strength, Midnight marshaled their forces in an attempt at all-out war against the League. Members of the Coalition were sent throughout the world to create havoc by causing mass breakouts at League Penitentiaries. An army of genetic hybrids known as Sharkmen were sent to Rio de Janeiro, intent on crushing the League base there before plaguing every seaport along the Atlantic. And to capitalize on the chaos, Midnight arranged a meeting with the United Nations in an attempt to negotiate their unconditional surrender. He met instead with a veritable army of League members, who skillfully neutralized his powers and carted him off to Confinement for his crimes. The Sharkman army was also defeated thanks to coordinated League efforts, proving that the Coalition which Midnight had scrounged together held none of the organization's former power. Before the League could take further steps to defeat the Coalition for good, the Technax Armada descended upon the Earth like a plague. Heroes begrudgingly united with Villains in defense of the planet, leading the effort to resist the invasion. During the week-long siege, Technax's forces stumbled across the Coalition's headquarters and assaulted it, not distinguishing between the Coalition and any other defensive human establishment. The Coalition managed to hold out until an Inferno Walker completely destroyed the base and much of the surrounding countryside; now thoroughly routed, the Coalition quickly dispersed into the civilian populace. They would not be heard from again until well after the Armada had been defeated. ''A New Era'' In the wake of the alien invasion, Mr. Mystery paid a visit to his fellow founder Grand Cross to discuss the future of the Coalition. The two agreed that the Coalition had lacked strong leadership since Doctor Danger's death, and that after all that had transpired they were the two best qualified to provide it. While the world worked tireless to rebuild fallen cities, the founders set to work restoring their organization to its former glory. With skill and influence they had not shown in a decade they brought both new and old Coalition members to heel, and sent agents to hunt down those members who had abandoned the syndicate. In a single month after the Armada's defeat the Coalition had become strong enough to reveal themselves to the world once more. As their first public act, the reformed Coalition sent a small team of Villains to kidnap Danielle Thomas, the daughter of the President of the United States. The Villains prevailed despite the best efforts of both the League and the Secret Service, though Aquarius was captured and subjected to endless interrogation. The Coalition sent another team to retrieve him, successfully raiding the League's headquarters and leaving the Heroes that much more determined to bring the Coalition down. The Heroes' research into where Danielle had been taken led them to The Foilocution Corporation, where they uncovered a Coalition plant holding the CEO hostage. With the CEO's help, they followed a paper trail which led them to a secret Coalition facility in upstate Michigan. Here they found Danielle in a heavily guarded laboratory. 'The Intervening Years' The League managed to rescue Danielle, returning her to her distraught mother and believing that in doing so they had thwarted the Coalition once again. What they did not realize was that they had unwittingly "rescued" the Coalition member Gestalt, who had taken the form of Danielle so that she could infiltrate the US Government. Gestalt quietly replaced the President and, under the guise of hiring additional staff and security to prevent another Coalition attack, appointed a number of undercover Coalition agents to positions of influence. After a short span of time these Coalition agents discovered what they suspected was another covert operation within the US Government. They spent months investigating before eventually discovering what they had feared - that the Children of Equality, thought destroyed more than a decade earlier, had survived and were operating from within the US Department of SuperHuman Affairs. Unable to intervene without blowing their cover, they approached the League for help, explaining that they believed the Children had rebuilt a WWII-era weapon and were smuggling it out of the country. The League managed to publicly expose the Children, eventually defeating them and destroying the device; the Coalition mercilessly routed the Children from the government, freezing their assets before driving them from the country. Although the Children had caused a setback to the Coalition's plans, they had provided the Coalition with something useful - plans for a series of power armor suits which were immune to superpowers. Once they were sure that the Children would be unable to use the technology against them, the Coalition created the patriotic STAR Soldier Initiative, an armored police force whose mandate was to aide the League in capturing SuperVillains on American soil. The STAR Soldiers were well received by both the American people and the League; the two forces operated in conjunction for several months and formed a camaraderie of sorts. During this time the Coalition began planting evidence that the League was misusing its position of unquestioned authority to protect certain Villains, framing League members for crimes they didn't commit, etc. The implications became so bad that the Coalition agents within the government were able to brand the League a criminal organization and call for the immediate arrest of all League members in the United States. The League was forced to go underground, evading the STAR Soldiers until they were able to trace the the roots of the conflict back to their source - the Coalition. While several groups of League members drew the STAR Soldiers out, a small team of Heroes infiltrated the Initiative's headquarters and gained remote access to their armor, shutting the Initiative down while exposing the Coalition's manipulations to the public. ''The Hand of God'' With the help of both real government officials and a handful of STAR Soldiers, the League traced the Coalition's machinations through several sources and discovered that they had used the STAR Soldier program as a cover for their real scheme. The crime syndicate had used government resources and satellite launching platforms to construct a massive space station in near-Earth orbit called the Hand of God. The Hand of God was designed to amplify and project Grand Cross' gravitic powers, and now that the station was built he used it to deadly effect, raining meteors down on the League and flinging the League's own space station into deep space. Neither the League nor the government could stop the destruction; any missile, craft or other projectile they launched at the station was destroyed by meteors or repulsed by gravity. From his position of absolute power, Grand Cross held the world at ransom, threatening to make examples of any nation or city who failed to submit to the Coalition's new world order. While the League scrambled to find some way to gain access to the unassailable Hand of God, they received unexpected aid from within the Coalition itself. The Coalition member Star, unable to reconcile the Coalition's mass destruction with his own worldview, defected to the League and helped them locate the Hand of God's only access point. He led a team of Heroes to the Coalition's headquarters, where a teleportation gate had been set up to provide the Coalition with access to the space station. The gate was destroyed in the ensuing battle, but not before a number of Heroes made it through to the space station. Once on the station the Heroes proceeded to systematically shut down each of the station's five gravitic projectors, disarming the station's most potent weapon before confronting Grand Cross himself. Enraged that the Coalition's most successful bid for world domination had been foiled, Grand Cross fought the Heroes with reckless abandon. In the low gravity environment, Grand Cross eventually became the victim of his own gravitic manipulations, accidentally crushing himself in a mass of debris and seeming to end what threat he posed to the world. Unfortunately, Grand Cross was all that was keeping the Hand of God in orbit, and the station began to fall toward Earth; the impact event would have been enough devastate humanity, a final parting shot from the Coalition's most devoted founder. The Heroes on board, with no means of escape and little means of saving the planet, used their powers in a last-ditch effort to slow the plummeting station before it could strike the surface. They barely managed to succeed, preventing a mass extinction event and leaving the Coalition defeated once again. ''A Return to Form'' At some point, a reincarnated Doctor Danger took back control of the Coalition. The World in Your Hands The Coalition has not yet appeared in The World in Your Hands. Headquarters Over the years the Coalition has used many facilities as their headquarters, as each successive location has been compromised by the League or fallen out of use. The syndicates's current headquarters is Lemurian Station, a satellite launching facility Grand Cross had built in the 1980s. Set within a remote mountain in Madagascar, the complex is dwarfed by the immense Galen Tower, a memorial to the late Coalition founder. Galen Tower serves as the housing of a massive charged particle beam weapon that defends the complex, functioning as an anti-aircraft, anti-ballistic, and anti-vehicle turret. Organizational Structure The Coalition is an organization built upon the perception of its own strength; with no true hierarchy and little uniting its members besides belief in their own superiority, displays of strength are the only means a Coalition member has to establish respect from their fellow Villains. Fear of reprisal is the basis of deference throughout the Coalition, with the stronger and more ruthless members forcibly rising to the upper echelons of the syndicate. Those who fill the lower class of members are often subject to ridicule and derision by the Coalition elite. Given this unstable dynamic, the Coalition has little in the way of cohesion, instead functioning more as an association of loosely affiliated cliques than a singular organization. The true core of the Coalition, and the force which has kept it together for close to fifty years, are the Coalition's four founders - Doctor Danger, Mr. Mystery, Renaissance, and Grand Cross. These Villains have served as leaders and enforcers throughout much of the Coalition's history, and are the ones most responsible for the Coalition's fearsome reputation. Though they all enjoy equal standing and command the respect and awe of the entire Coalition, it is widely held that Doctor Danger is the sole leader of the syndicate. Category:Coalition of Corruption Category:Organizations